virtual crazy gang, part II

[Malcolm G]

I think I may have found an old Russian thing which fits the bill, they didn’t need it any more because someone keeps sinking their ships.
It’s referred to as CIWS and it’s going cheap, although I think it goes bang rather than cheep.

[Varley]

That sounds like us asking for trouble. What is needed is for everyone else to employ FASRWs.
(Far-Away-Short-Range Weapons).

In the cinema, when ordnance is about to go bang, it starts ticking. If that CISWS comes with Vlad the Insaner's logo on it please don't bring it onboard until it's stopped going cheep.

[Malcolm G]

On the other hand - maybe the reason they keep 'loosing' stuff is because it's not very effective at stopping incoming.
Better scrub that idea.
But I'll keep looking.

[Engine Serang]

CIWS lacks punch in the torpedo department. It fires deflated uranium which TKmax tells me floats. We used dump the gash buckets down upon them but MARPOL has buggered that up also. Little use dumping a bucket of clean cardboard and newspaper on a RIB full of deranged desperados.

[tweediekiwi]

Huh, I wouldn't take my lungs into a hospital here. I'd be bound to get covid, again. Thank you for your commiserations though. I suppose I should request the stewards to deliver you a firkin of Tawny Port, if indeed, that is how Tawny is deployed? I can't do port or I get gout. Family failing.
I managed to interweb the LRIT abbreviation, but SSAS brought up a nightmare of spreadsheet stuff. In your nautical terms it's ... Stand Still and Steam? Stop Steering and Sink? Soap Strop and Shave? So much to learn. Were you a Marconi man? I'm a macaroni man myself.
Marked men will be just fine as they have the knack of self preservation built in.
Better splice the mainbrace I suppose.

[Engine Serang]

I think the best way forward on the SSAS is to park it for the time being, we have a lot to learn about tying knots and hitches, rig a Pilot Ladder safely, grease and maintain roller fairleads and quite important memorise the duties of the Peggy.
As a DHU your next step up the greasy pole is EDH which you wont reach if you spend time drinking with the ner-do-wells.

[Varley]

WRT Inmarsat C (other brands are available but they aren't as good) - Ship Security Alert System. WRT Tawny port (deployment by firkin acceptable, but by firkin barge preferred). Sip Slowly After Supper.

We have gout in the family too but try as I might I am unable to develop it with Port. Perhaps you should try Tesco's own brand (do you have Tesco's down there?) or Rochas if there are ladies at table.

Indeed I started out a Macaroni man in 1971 and stayed with them until they ran out of the proper job and I left the well-lit uplands to descended to the depths of the pit full time. I must have been too much bother at that because after three trips I found myself behind a desk in 1981 with my former shipmates calling me rsole. Another 30 years saw me to retirement and a honorific 'Mr' to put before Rsole.

[tweediekiwi]

OK ES, I have my New Boatmans Manual here and the Ashley Book of Knots and I'm ready to learn. I think I'll be fine until the GD starts rolling, as I get seasick sitting on a dewy lawn. The Peggy? Is that a ship's husband? I recall Dad relating tales about getting his 'dhobi' done by such a person, who used a steam hose and metal bucket to clean his overalls. That trick worked right up to his first Bri-Nylon shirt, which came back as a grey lump with buttons stuck in it. DHU is a Gaelic word for bum and I hope we're not getting involved in unsavoury sailor habits? I must pack a pot of starters just in case.
Ah yes Mr. Varley, I know about Inmarsat phones as I had to purchase them out of my budget for the 2nd Signals Squadron, but sadly, they never let me play with one. The troops used them in East Timor, Bougainville etc. No Tesco's here, we have Woolworths, New World and Pak'n'Save supermarkets and I believe Costco from the West Island are trying to move into the market here. YM may know more about them? Btw, I looked up his Spencer St Bridge and it's bigger than the Pulcrose Bridge - even has trams over the Yarra.
Right, I have ropes to learn, fairleads to grease, Peggy to learn and ne'er do wells to learn drinking from. Busy place here isn't it?

[YM-Mundrabilla]

As a landlubber, I am in a bit of a knot trying to work out some of the 'nautical?' acronyms in recent posts. I don't know much about Costco either other than that unless you want a thousand toilet rolls in one purchase they don't want to know you.

I don't know if they even sell Vegemite (or Marmite if you insist) but I have seen Vegemite in gallon tins in a 'supermarket' at Quorn in the Flinders Ranges north of Port Augusta. Fabulous place even had one of those overhead wire thingys to a single cash desk. All years ago of course.

I don't know why dredging the Yarra didn't increase the headroom under the bridge either. Perhaps I will stand for lord mayor and a councillor will explain it to me? (the lack of capitals for mayor and councillors is a subtle hint as to my respect for them and their ilk - but you lot will already be aware of that.

YM
DADFA (Deputy Assistant Director of F... All)

[Malcolm G]

Peggy - meaning man with peg leg.
In days of sail if a seaman lost a leg he could no longer work aloft and often served as a messman.
Nowadays he would be fitted with a specially designed prosthetic limb to enable him to ascend into the rigging following months of special training of course.
But the messman or ‘mess steward’ is still called a Peggy.

[Varley]

Now, talking of knots.

An old master on his final trip calls at a dockside pub much frequented in his more junior days. After being astonished at the price of a pint he idly wonders if the young ladies still plied their trade in the accommodations 'above'. They did and although astonished again at the tariff he decides that as it's his last call he will sample the goods.

Well aware he was no longer the golden youth that the girls had vied for but still proud (if not vain) he asked the dug-out old maid, who had drawn his short straw, "How he was doing".

"Well", says the old trooper. "You're doing three knots, Captain".

"Three knots, how d'yer work that out?"

"Easy" says she "You're not hard, not in and you're not getting your money back!"

Dredging.

We need a belly-button draughtsman to confirm but I think the reason dredging doesn't work is that deepening the depth under keel will reduce tendency to squat.

If one were tramping (full-away plus) under the Yarra Bridge with just enough Yarra underneath to remain seaborne then squat would result in more airdraught. Of course there is a good chance that one pushes sufficient Yarra water out of the way to allow her to tear herself open on Yarra bed which is not as buoyant as Yarra water (assuming antipodean water to be as floationally similar to Douglas river water) or as forgiving in terms of what it does to formerly double bottoms when encountering them at speed.

Dredging will result in conditions less conducive to squat and so reducing airdraught. In this case raising the bridge might be a better option to avoid conjoining of the two bridge decks. Meanwhile, take a pilot.

I should say the squat here is not related to the toilet paper procurement conundrum of earlier in the thread. Not, that is, unless the arithmetic lacks the necessary precision required to employ squat to avoid either of the two immediately unfavourable outcomes of such a plan.

[tweediekiwi]

YM, fellow landlubber, surely your Yarra River is a tidal estuarine variable level piece of liquid. Dredging wouldn't change the air-space headroom by much, but you could use the spoil from the riverbed to increase the height of your stop banks? Those catering packs of Vegemite could be used to raise the Spencer St Bridge so that passing shipping needn't alter the meta-centric height of their vessel or reduce the volumetric efficiency of the funnel by flattening in passing. Varley can do his arithmetic for those calculations, on his graph-paper slide rule, whilst drafting new bellybuttons for the entire crew.

Malcolm, I wooden have thought of that! I recall my grandfather singing an old Burl Ives song about Looking Through the Knot-hole in Grandpas Wooden leg. I must have used the peg memory system to save that in my head. Today, they would make an AI driven robotic limb to do the rat-line climbing, top-sail work, setting the jiboom spanker and suchlike, without using the rest of the sailor. He can stay on deck making medicinal smokes for the crew - I believe it's called roller reefing?

Isn't it strange that we mention mayors and councillors and squat, all in the same post here.

[Malcolm G]

Roller reefing? Hey man, I never spotted that euphemism before. Must bear it in mind for future reference.

[Engine Serang]

Between BillH speaking in a dead language and you quoting from Ashley's book of horrors I'm in danger of developing a migraine.
The Deck Bose will show you 12 knots and 3 splices....... All you need to know. Practise day and night. You will go on Bridge Watches and learn the duties of the Lookout, the Helmsman and the Farmer, you can leave the Metacentric Height in the safe hands of Harry Tate and I will assist if required.

Keep well away from the drunken crowd especially in port, don't forget His Lordship was once a young, enthusiastic first tripper and look at him now, sozzeled on cheap port wine.

[Varley]

Many ships plying their trade in rivers have cleverly collapsible masts, bridges (nautical), aerials, stanchions etc. (collectively: 'clobber'). This is so they can avoid the arithmetic surrounding the necromancer's approach to squat (nautical) but still allows them to approach bridges (geologically affixed) without resulting in squat (trouser browning avoidance). Providing they remember to use the features in time, of course.

The problem with GD is that the funnel suite, forward cocktail lounge and swimming pool are structural. Much else can be removed and stored below during canal passages but removing the cat's basket (clement weather only) and the owner's two story bathing machine doesn't make-up for the bits we can't. Nor am sure we can disassemble the full scale working model trebuchet TMac and E-S bought last time they went on a bender up the road.

Many other bits do fall off the old girl but Class make us stick them back on again, and at some considerable cost to Sir W, too.

(I am too well oiled to go cheep, but I do drip a bit these days).

[tweediekiwi]

So, correct me if I'm right, but doesn't squatting your ship too much cause an unsightly tumblehome?
I would have thought that the GD was designed such that the cocktail bar could be rotated to disappear into its back wall and that the swimming pool and bathing machine could collapse into the bottom drawer of Sir W's bunk. The water of course could be efficiently be converted to steam and released back into the atmosphere until we need it later. It won't cost too much to the owner but someone might take damage from the ships cat whilst bed moving, and that may be a trouser browning occasion all of it's own. I've know some wild pussy in my time and they don't agree with disappearing bedding. We cold take advice from such piscatorial trapping members, like rustytrawler, and tow a net behind to catch the pieces that fall orf? We might even get fry of fish caught in the cod-end! I'll bring contact adhesive to stick it back together and fresh (non-brown) trousers.

[tweediekiwi]

Happy International Day of Friendship to you all.

[rustytrawler]

Rustytrawler has not got time to set up a net for you as my net is in use by the French goverment catching turds in that mucky river seine, dirty bastards, dont they know that they are putting the frogs in danger.

[Engine Serang]

Seine is so dirty it must be managed by Thames Water.

[YM-Mundrabilla]

Media here in Oz is saying that some medical professionals are advising swimmers to drink a can of Coca Cola after swimming in the Seine 'to kill any dog germs'!

Haven't been to Paris for years but main memories are of a beautiful city, rude locals and dog droppings in the streets which, presumably, end up in the Seine.

[Varley]

If she were built tumblehome I am sure that would discourage squatting, a prerequisite for that sort of overside ablutionary arrangement especially if done on a sloping slitway. The only reason we keep the poolwater is because as Tmac begrudges putting water on deck, he would have conniptions if it was required every time a flush was required (and does Hempel do a boot topping in cholera-brown?). Unsightly hardly conveys the prospect.

(We have three Doulton Health ablutionary pans left. These enforce a squatting attitude of discharge, quite impressed my Doctor Uncle although he further opined that the more acute angle employed by many 'primitives'' when a la commode was healthier still).

I don't know about glue. What we have is usually kept in the Chief's fridge. I doubt he's less anal with that than with washing down. Anyway there's usually only enough to make up the odd 'O' ring, can't think it would be good for keeping on the funnel when encountering a carelessly unlifted bridge.

[Engine Serang]

Originally Posted by tweediekiwi

Happy International Day of Friendship to you all.

On this ship there's only one reply;

Bugger Off.
You Snowflake.

[Malcolm G]

Originally Posted by tweediekiwi

Happy International Day of Friendship to you all.

Brought to you be the Greetings card manufacturers.
The same people who turned Mothering Sunday into Mothers day; Invented Father's day; Decided that dogs should get birthday cards etc, etc.

[YM-Mundrabilla]

At the end of the day 'today is the day of ......' is nothing but money for someone.

[tweediekiwi]

Well, snowflake is it? Glad to hear that you are familiar with Chuck Pahlaniuk's "Fight Club", book or movie, and calling me that is fine. At least I'm multifaceted and interesting but sadly I don't last long when the heat comes on. No further friendly stuff shall be the hallmark of my behaviour from now on.
Varley's sloping slitway sounded exciting. Can we see a photo of that?
Rusty, we can't use that net after it's been soaked in French merde so with my newly learned knots, I'll knit a new one. To hasten the process can you all donate a string vest each and we'll tie 'em together with all the finishing lines when the Olymic Committee is done with them.
Where's the bar? Where's the bar-steward? Everybody drink up. This salty life is dry work.